


if you follow the rivers home

by Golbez



Category: Heaven's Vault (Video Game)
Genre: Best Friends, F/F, Growing Up, Implied Relationships, Non-Chronological, POV Third Person Limited, Spoilers for end of the game, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 07:37:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18633727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golbez/pseuds/Golbez
Summary: Aliya looks up. Oroi looks down.





	if you follow the rivers home

**Author's Note:**

> Probably not terribly cohesive but I just very badly wanted to write something about these two :D Also the timeline and ages might be wonky since I pretty quickly pieced those together from a fairly fresh NG+ timeline.

Oroi worries, because that is the sort of person she has become. There's no longer room in her life for climbing walls and stealing screwdrivers, not when she has a business and two children to tend. So she worries, and sometimes she worries about Aliya.

'Sometimes' stretches into often the longer Aliya doesn't visit. First the weeks, then the months, then a whole year with no sign of her adventurous friend.

Then one day she opens the door, and it's Aliya who's struck the gong, with a new robot that sasses her, and this time she's found the lost crown of the empire. Because _of course_ it would be Aliya.

***

They're fifteen and they've climbed as high as they can in the citadel. They've done this before, of course, but not recently, not since Oroi started worrying, and breathing had become a chore for Aliya.

They can just make out the rivers above Elboreth, this high up, shimmering lines of blue and green that span the azure expanse Aliya is gazing into. Oroi touches her arm, and she glances down at her friend sitting on the building ledge, legs dangling over the side. 

"You're always looking up, Aliya."

"Someone on this moon has to," she answers. She sits down anyway, so she can breathe a little better. "Looking at Iox doesn't count."

"Why not? That counts as up."

"Don't be silly, there's a whole Nebula to look up at that doesn't include Iox."

Oroi hums, and Aliya knows she's thinking, gears in her head turning away just like any of the devices she's been tinkering with. Aliya takes this opportunity to shift closer on the ledge, until their shoulders are bumping and Oroi glances at her.

"Why did you drag me up here?" asks Oroi, her brow furrowed as she continues to work it out in her head.

"I just needed a break," Aliya admits, "from...everything. Everyone."

Oroi draws in a breath, and places a hand over Aliya's on the dusty brown stone. Aliya knows she's thinking the same as her now. Elboreth, for all its dust and people, is their home...but sometimes, it's hard to believe they'll both reach adulthood on this moon. The orphanage seems like it'll keep them both forever.

"I don't count as everyone?"

"No, you don't."

Oroi leans against her, a rare show of affection, one Aliya eagerly takes by wrapping an arm around her. They are fifteen and Elboreth stretches out without end beneath their feet the way the rivers above wind at a steady pace.

Aliya will take her luxuries where she can, and she is sure Oroi feels the same.

***

Aliya explores, because that's who she is. From the suffocating spaces of the Godsfeet slums, to the winding maze of the Catkis, to the whole of the mysterious Nebula—she has no intention of leaving it all unseen.

And that means leaving Elboreth behind sometimes.

***

They are twenty-three and Aliya finds the ship during a visit to Elboreth, and Oroi understands this must truly be the beginning of the end of their time together. Iox has already tried to claim Aliya, taken her away and dressed her like them, taught her their stories and beliefs and Aliya claims she isn't the same as them but Oroi knows better.

Oroi sees it in her eyes when Aliya takes her hands and asks, "Can you fix it?"

She sees the hunger that had been in the other Ioxian's eyes the day she came to take Aliya away—and when did she start thinking of Aliya as Ioxian? But Aliya is her friend first, and Oroi glances over at the ship.

She doesn't want Aliya on it, but the ship calls to her, its hidden machinery singing and luring her in. She doesn't want to lose Aliya. She wants to fix it.

In the end, Oroi sighs. "I'll see what I can do."

So later she sets her four-year old daughter, also Aliya, down on a bench at the end of the abandoned hall, a good distance from the ship, and gets to work.

A year later, her daughter is busy with Timor's bar and her son is swaddled and sleeping against her chest and the ship flies. Aliya, her beloved friend, gets in it and stretches out a hand to her and asks her to leave Elboreth with her. 

She has two children and a business to tend. Oroi wishes Aliya luck on the rivers.

***

"Do you wish to vault?"

She's always looked up, into the winding rivers, chasing that thrill of exploration, the unknown. The beyond. Vaulting would take her further than before, past the confines of the Nebula...and she would take the waters with her, to forge the new, unexplored rivers with a robot she doesn't hate as much as she did the others.

It's _almost_ everything she's ever wanted.

***

Oroi worries, because Aliya has been seeing her more and more frequently with stranger and older devices, because she's even ventured off Elboreth with her to a distant moon where six gods had gazed at her eerily, and then, quite suddenly, Aliya disappears.

It has been weeks since her last visit. The worry is consuming her, and it does not help that the other Aliya in her life has been unreasonable about the boy she thinks she loves. Because her daughter is fourteen and of course she would be unreasonable.

Oroi sighs, and gets to tinkering with one of the few pieces of Three she had kept. She doesn't get too far when the gong outside rings, startling her. The gong rings again, and she curses before going to open the door and she is expecting Tapi but instead it's not.

It's Aliya, dustier than usual, tired and robotless, which is a shame because Oroi had thought that Six was the best fit to Aliya yet.

"Oroi..." she says, and then she grins. "You won't _believe_ where I've been."


End file.
